Documentary educates

Director Avishai Mekonen tells his story in “400 Miles to Freedom.” (Submitted photo )

January 30, 2013|By Sergio Carmona, Staff Writer

The Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education in Miami is associated with education. Jewish education is prevalent throughout the documentary "400 Miles to Freedom," which screens during the 16th annual CAJE Miami Jewish Film Festival.

This 60-minute film, which screens at 12:30 p.m. on Feb. 3 at Frank Theaters at Intracoastal Mall, 3701 Northeast 163rd St. in North Miami Beach, is an informative and insightful one that educates the audience of the plight of Ethiopian Jews as well as different ethnicities of Jews through the director's perspective. It is a stunning piece of filmmaking that also gives the audience a vast amount of new knowledge and perspective and leaves a powerful impact on the viewers. The film is directed and written by Avishai Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen and spoken in English, Hebrew and Amharic with subtitles.

The documentary explores issues of immigration and racial diversity in Judaism while showing the audience how the director comes to terms with his own story. It tells the story of how a secluded 2,500-year-old community of observant Jews, known as Beta Israel, in the northern Ethiopian mountains fled a dictatorship and began a secret and dangerous journey of escape. Mekonen, who was then a 10-year-old boy, was one of these Jews. The film shows how Mekonen breaks his 20-year silence about the kidnapping he endured as a child in Sudan during his community's exodus.

The film transports the audience into this journey that Mekonen and his people had to deal with and displays stunning images of where he was raised and how his life was in Israel. The story shows how dangerous it was for a Jew to be living in Ethiopia in the 1970s and features interviews with people who discuss their struggles in hiding signs of their Judaism. The images in the film are so powerful that they alone could tell the dire story of these Jews and the audience we feel inspired to see them get to Israel. The interviews and conversations in the film are also very emotional and impactful. Some of the interviewees are people who helped Mekonen go through his journey. The audience will also be surprised to know about different ethnicities of Jews and little known communities throughout the world.

For more information and to buy tickets, call 305-573-7304 or visit http://www.miamijewishfilmfestival.net/mjff/Film-lineup/400-miles-to-freedom/.